Mary Anning: British palaeontologist celebrated in Google doodle

British fossil collector Mary Anning's 215th birthday has been marked with a
Google doodle

Google is celebrating the 215th anniversary of the birth of British palaeontologist Mary Anning with a special doodle, which shows Anning uncovering a dinosaur's fossilised remains.

Mary Anning, 21 May 1799 - 9 March 1847, was a British fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist. She found global fame after making a series of discoveries when exploring the marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis in Dorset. The British Journal for the History of Science has called her 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew'.

Although she was famous within geological circles during her own lifetime, the male-dominated scientific community struggled to accept a woman born into a poor family as someone they should respect.

Anning's father was a religious dissenter, subjecting the family to the legal discrimination which that entailed, and women were not eligible to join the Geological Society of London. The latter in particular precluded Anning from the recognition she deserved, and her only scientific writing published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839. Even this was only an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims.

Anning's discoveries at Lyme Regis stemmed from its Blue Lias cliffs, where the young Anning would collect fossils dislodged during landslides before they were swept out to sea. The dangerous work meant she was nearly killed during a landslide when she was 34.

Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton, which she found with her brother Joseph when she was just 12 years old, as well as both of the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found. Anning also found the first pterosaur skeleton outside Germany, and a number of significant fish fossils.

Prior to Anning's work, there was very little research or inclination challenging a Bible-based view of the story of creation. Her studies, though largely uncredited, contributed to key changes in scientific theories about prehistoric life and the history of Earth.

In 2010, 163 years after her death, the Royal Society placed Anning on a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. Her life was also the subject of Tracy Chevalier's 2009 historical novel, Remarkable Creatures, which was published to coincide with the 210th anniversary of her birth, and of Joan Thomas's 2010 novel Curiosity.